Job costing dashboards for contractors on QuickBooks
See every open job's budget, actual cost, margin and billing position in one place, built from the job cost data already in QuickBooks Online or Business Central and refreshed on a schedule.
Based in metro Detroit, working with contractors across Michigan and remotely. Fixed fee, quoted before work starts.
What the dashboard shows
QuickBooks records the costs. The dashboard answers the questions an owner asks on Monday morning: which jobs are making money, which are slipping, and where the overrun is.
Every open job on one page
Contract value, budget, cost to date, percent complete, projected margin and billing position for each job, sorted so the ones that need attention come first.
Budget vs. actual by cost code
Labor, materials, subcontractors and equipment against the estimate for each job, so an overrun shows up while there is still time to act on it.
Margin fade since bid
Projected margin today compared with the margin you bid, by job and by project manager, so a slow slide is visible before closeout.
Billing position
Over and under billing for each job, calculated the same way as the WIP schedule, so the dashboard and the month-end numbers agree.
How it gets built
Check the job cost setup
A dashboard is only as good as the coding underneath it. The first step looks at how jobs, cost codes and items are set up in QuickBooks and lists what needs to change, such as costs posted without a job or estimates never entered.
Build the model
Job cost, estimate and billing data comes out of QuickBooks Online or Business Central into one model, with percent complete, earned revenue and margin defined once.
Ship the dashboard
In Power BI by default, refreshed on a schedule, drilling from the whole company into one job and one cost code. Owners and project managers see the same numbers.
Job costing dashboard questions
What contractors and controllers ask about job costing on QuickBooks.
Yes, to a point. QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced track income and costs by project with profitability reports, and Advanced adds an estimates versus actuals report for each project. What they do not give you is a WIP-style view across every open job at once: over or under billing, margin fade since bid, and all jobs side by side. Contractors usually rebuild that in a spreadsheet each month, which is the part a dashboard replaces.
Every open job with contract value, budget, cost to date, percent complete, projected margin and billing position, plus budget versus actual by cost code for any one job. It answers which jobs are losing margin, where the overrun is, and whether billing is keeping up with the work.
Sometimes a little. Costs have to be posted to a job, and ideally to a cost code, and each job needs an estimate to compare against. The setup review at the start lists exactly what to change. Most of it is how entries are coded going forward, not a new system.
QuickBooks Online and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Sage 100 Contractor, Foundation and other construction systems work too, from their job cost and billing exports.
The WIP schedule is the month-end financial report your surety, bank and CPA read. The dashboard is the day-to-day view for owners and project managers. They come from the same job cost and billing data, so they agree.
A fixed fee, quoted after a 30-minute call, based on how many open jobs you carry and how clean the job cost coding is. No hourly billing.
Tell me how you track job costs today
Thirty minutes is enough to see how your jobs are set up in QuickBooks, what you look at each week, and what a dashboard would need to answer.